Loving – first look review | Little White Lies

Festivals

Lov­ing – first look review

16 May 2016

Four adults, two men and two women, standing together in a field.
Four adults, two men and two women, standing together in a field.
Jeff Nichols makes it five-for-five with this gen­tly stir­ring dra­ma about an inter­ra­cial cou­ple in 50s America.

Mar­tin Scors­ese is the mas­ter­mind behind Jeff Nichols’ fifth film, which is about an inter­ra­cial cou­ple fight­ing for their rights in mid­cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca. He brought the sto­ry of Mil­dred and Richard Lov­ing (already told in doc­u­men­tary form by Nan­cy Buirs­ki) to Nichols, who respond­ed: I think this sto­ry can be very suc­cess­ful, but I’m prob­a­bly not the one to make a main­stream ver­sion of this movie.”

Describ­ing what Lov­ing isn’t helps to describe what it is. It is not a stir­ring mir­ror to social injus­tice, in the vein of Ava DuVernay’s Sel­ma, or a chest-beat­ing court­room dra­ma. It pos­sess all the hall­marks of a pas­sion­ate civ­il rights movie, span­ning 10 years of incar­cer­a­tions, lawyers and appeals against Virginia’s anti-mis­ce­gena­tion laws. These laws pre­vent­ed inter­ra­cial mar­riage there­fore ren­der­ing chil­dren of such mar­riages ille­git­i­mate and nul­li­fy­ing the right to inher­it land.

Lov­ing stays away from noisy dra­ma, pre­fer­ring to exist in the same spaces that its sub­jects were drawn to: qui­et domes­tic har­mo­ny and the green, green grass of home. His­to­ry is shown as a cir­cus that hap­pens at a dis­tance from the real busi­ness of liv­ing. As their fates play out in the courts, Richard climbs lad­ders and mends cars, while Mil­dred keeps house and tends to the kids.

Both are peo­ple of few words. Joel Edger­ton has turned his his teeth brown and his hair blonde to play a man whose devo­tion to his wife is shown by deeds. His dia­logue most­ly con­sists of grunts. Ruth Neg­ga speaks with her huge brown eyes. Both actors give the impres­sion that for each word they speak, a hun­dred oth­ers have been thought. The lines that make it out have impact.

These peace­ful peo­ple have their lives spun by the machi­na­tions of racist laws after they mar­ry in secret. Mar­riage is Richard’s way of pro­tect­ing Mil­dred after she falls preg­nant, although the film would nev­er explain this. We’re trust­ed to make sense of this sub­dued film with­out the need for brash sign­post­ing. Lov­ing has tonal sim­i­lar­i­ties to Nichols pre­vi­ous film, Mid­night Spe­cial, but is far less opaque. Its sprawl­ing silences are upheld by clear rela­tion­ship stakes, not to men­tion the ele­phant-but­ton in the room that Nichols nev­er push­es: social justice.

Michael Shan­non makes it five-for-five with Nichols, pop­ping up like a home deliv­ery of light relief as LIFE pho­tog­ra­ph­er Grey Vil­let. With his lol­lop­ing walk, avant-garde specs and cam­era he is enter­tain­ing­ly con­spic­u­ous in the seren­i­ty of the Lov­ings’ home. Home is more than where the Lov­ings live. Home is what is tak­en away from them and what they are fight­ing to return to. Home is where they spend time with their fam­i­ly and work on the land. Nichols films the great out­doors – all its green­ery, trees, sun­shine and orange leaves – root­ing his char­ac­ters in the gen­tle rhythms of a rur­al life. These val­ues are glue. Not only do they love each oth­er, they love the same life.

This is not, as Nichols told Scors­ese, a film with main­stream nar­ra­tive touch points. The big peaks are small, play­ing as flick­ers of fear or hope across usu­al­ly com­posed faces. Nichols holds his cou­ple so del­i­cate­ly with­in what is typ­i­cal­ly shown as a bru­tal time and place. He turns the rest of the film down so that small demon­strate acts, like an arm slung around a shoul­der, res­onate resound­ing­ly, like a heart­beat heard through a stethoscope.

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